Heart of Light (54 page)

“Oh, your lady friend is fine,” Carew said, taking a deep puff on his cigarette. “She will not suffer anything worse than a headache.” A deep and devious grin twisted his proud features. “And very pleased our mother will be, I am sure, to meet her future daughter-in-law. Do you plan to get married wearing lion bits?”

“It's not like that,” Nigel said, speaking thickly through a headache that seemed to stop his thoughts between one word and the next. “She's not . . . Comrades in arms, we are. I am already married.”

“Oh, really? Well, when last I saw the lovely Mrs. Oldhall she was consorting with a tribesman and a dragon, so doubtless you will be able to have your marriage annulled. As for your friend, I really don't care what you call her, but I want you to know this . . .” Suddenly Carew's voice changed. He'd been using his company voice, the voice he used when playing the young man about town: urbane, cultured and controlled. Now his voice changed in tone to one that only those who had been on the wrong end of Carew's cruelty would recognize.

Nigel had heard him sound like this long ago, in the lost days of his boarding school life. Away from teachers and parents, Carew had allowed his voice to sound this slitheringly cruel, like . . . like a serpent crawling, poisonous and bright, from the undergrowth.

“Whether she wakes at all is your choice, my dear brother. I have picked up your compass stone, but it won't talk to me. It seems you have bound it to yourself—or at least I assume so, since my associates in the Hyena Men got a fix on you when you were so foolish as to use magic to activate it—and now it won't talk to me.” He set the compass stone on Nigel's stomach. “Ask it to show you the direction to the ruby, Nigel. Do it now, and your lady friend and you will be released.”

But in Nigel's mind, things were moving and shifting, and several conclusions were forming. The first was that Carew wouldn't let Nigel go once the compass stone showed the direction. Of course not. He wouldn't let Nigel go until they reached the ruby. And then . . .

Carew had talked of his associates in the Hyena Men. That meant he had admitted to a criminal bond to a native organization wishing to overthrow England's queen. Or at least to rob her of her African domains. This was a crime, and there was no reason at all for Carew to admit to a crime to Nigel. Unless Carew intended to kill him.

“Why do you need me and my compass stone, Carew?” he asked very mildly. “Didn't you have it first? Do you mean you never imprinted it, brother?”

Carew flinched and Nigel knew he had hit a sore spot. “Never mind that. Only use the compass stone for me, show me where the ruby is and I will let you and your lady friend go.”

“Why do you want the ruby, Carew? For the queen?” Nigel's vision was now clearing and he saw that he lay in a sort of clearing, on rocky ground, and that there were several natives around as well as Carew. The one standing behind Carew—an ugly-looking, bulldog-like customer—frowned at Carew when Nigel said that.

And Carew shifted again, becoming once more the daylight Carew, the polite society Carew—engaging, fervent and seemingly all goodness, the delight of drawing rooms and the hope of marriaging mamas. “No. I have seen so much injustice in Africa, Nigel, that it seems to me that the ruby should be used for Africans and their good. We have no business here. Let them have their own power. I shall find the ruby for the peoples of Africa.”

The African man behind Carew nodded approvingly and Nigel thought that he, too, would have been convinced by so gallant a speech. He would have been convinced if he hadn't known Carew all along and been all too intimately acquainted with his self-serving, self-centered, utterly ruthless mind and heart.

As it was, he heard a small gurgle of laughter escape his lips before he could stop it. “Carew, I don't believe you,” he said softly. “I've known you too well.”

If he hoped to shatter Carew's calm, he failed. Carew took a deep pull on his cigarette and said, “The sad thing for you, Nigel, is that—whether you believe me or not—you are my last hope. Yesterday, I lost track of your wife's power. I don't know if she died, or simply changed. However, I do know I can't find her. So, dear brother, you are confronted with two choices. You can activate the stone for me, and you and your lady friend will not be harmed . . . at least not yet. Or I can torture her slowly to see if you'll give in. And if you don't . . . well, then we kill you to rinse the stone clean of its attachment, after which I can hope to attach it to myself or to my friend Shenta here. Mind you, the sacrifice might not work. And if it doesn't, one or both of you will have died in vain. However it's a risk I have to take if you won't cooperate.”

“Don't do it,” Nassira's voice said from beside Nigel. “He'll still kill us if you help him.”

Turning around, Nigel saw Nassira's eyes open and fixed on him, and was so relieved to have his reasoning confirmed that he only said, “Don't worry. I won't.”

“How touching,” Carew said mockingly. “Well. I did say if one way didn't work, the other would.” He got up and stood, revealing behind him one large stone that some of his helpers had just set up, as though for a ritual. “Now, which way is it going to go? Are you going to do what I wish? Or do I play with the girl?” His blue eyes sparkled in amusement. “I've known you to be many things in our lives, but none of them is stupidly brave, Nigel. So . . . let's see.”

He spoke rapidly to the men behind him. Two of them came and grabbed Nassira, despite her desperate attempts to free herself from their grasp by writhing and twisting. They carried her to the stone. Another one approached and gave Carew an old stone knife, which sparkled with power.

Carew took one final pull of his cigarette and threw it on the ground, stepping on it with a foot still attired in glimmering shoes. How had he kept his shoes polished in Africa? And although he limped a little, he looked as if Africa hadn't changed him at all.

“I hate to do this, truly, I do, Nigel. Such a waste. But since you won't help, you leave me no choice.” He grinned at Nigel. “Are you sure you won't change your mind?”

Nigel's heart beat very fast at his throat, so loud it seemed amazing he could hear anything else. And his headache pounded, just behind his eyes. But he had to think. He could not do what Carew wanted, but neither could he let him kill Nassira. He had to stop Carew now.

That this thought was overreaching pride, considering he was bound and laying on the ground utterly helpless, did no more than add desperation to his thought. If only he could get Carew's followers to see him for what he was!

And then, out of his confusion and desperation, the same sort of instinct that had allowed him to kill the lion found voice. “Carew,” he said, uttering the words he'd never dared speak when his brother tormented him in childhood. “You're too much of a coward to sacrifice me. You want me to use the compass stone? I'll fight you for it.”

Carew's look of utter surprise and disdain showed Nigel that Carew was not afraid and that Nigel had, possibly, just made the greatest mistake in a lifetime of them.

WEDDING NIGHT

They'd used the elephant—a suddenly tame creature—
to get away from their campsite. Not anywhere in particular as much as far away from where the Hyena Men might find them.

Emily found it odd to sit atop the beast with these two strange men, surveying the countryside. It all looked different that way. But then, everything looked different anyway.

Having shared Kitwana's mind had not been a temporary or momentary thing. She hadn't expected it to be. She'd read enough novels to know how special such a joining could be, and how permanent. In most such novels, it stood if not in place of a marriage, in surety of it, for no two people with magical power could share so much of themselves and not be united forever.

Other things she knew—or thought she knew—from her novels. If they didn't lie, then this joining between a man and a woman, no matter how unacquainted before, only happened if the two of them were predestined to be one.

She knew all this and kept it to herself. Because she felt Kitwana was a part of her, as vitally linked to her as her own soul, she
could not
impose her feelings on him. Perhaps it wasn't the same among his people. And she could imagine what opposition he'd face from his people if he brought her back as his bride.

She amused herself with a fantasy of taking him back to meet her father—of introducing this African son-in-law to him. She could well imagine that his family would feel the same about her. Only perhaps more so.

From his mind, from the memories, some of which weren't clear as to place and time, but all of which were clear as to feelings, she'd realized he was a cherished son—and a well-loved one. She'd also acquired the feeling that his family was important, his status high.

It probably would be as disastrous a marriage for him as for her. And while she was willing to risk her status for him, she couldn't demand the same of him. No. She loved him enough to leave him free. Even if a portion of her would always keep the image and memory of him.

And then there was the other result of their merge. Her power had been released. She'd have to learn to use it, but she could feel it—all of it—within her, vital and alive, and no longer closed in or unusable.

She now had more power than just about anyone else she'd ever met. And with this power, which she'd learn to use, she would look after herself. She didn't need anyone to protect her.

With such lofty thoughts she rode through the day. They traveled almost in silence, Farewell being too wounded and Kitwana too seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts to make more than casual conversation.

They camped for the night in a cave accessible only through a narrow passage between rocks, and that passage was guarded by the elephant that would obey their mind commands. In the cave, Kitwana built a fire from wood he'd found. Then he'd disappeared for some minutes, to return with fish impaled in his spear.

“They rise to a magelight,” he said, as though that explained everything.

Emily had taken over then, gutting and cleaning and roasting the fish over the fire, while Kitwana made tea. Peter ate more than Emily expected—but she supposed that was good, because it meant that he was less likely to feel famished in the night and go in search of prey.

After eating, Kitwana sat silently for a moment, then stood up and bowed slightly. “I'll sleep now,” he said. And, taking one of the blankets they'd managed to salvage, he retreated with it to the other side of the fire.

Emily could imagine him there, lying on the stony floor. She imagined him stretching, arranging himself for sleep. And she realized, startled, that the mind-merge had given her a knowledge of how his body moved and felt from the inside. He'd be too big and too heavy to sleep comfortably in this cave. And he wouldn't complain, because no good would come of it.

“Go to him,” Farewell whispered.

“I beg your pardon?” Emily said, looking up, her voice louder than she meant it to be.

Farewell put his finger in front of his lips. “Go to him,” he whispered. “I've been seeing you look at each other for all these days now. I've seen what the merge did to each of you. Go to him!”

Emily tried to pull her nonexistent dignity about herself. “Mr. Farewell,” she said. “How can you suggest that? I am a lady of quality and I—”

But the impish eyes only smiled at her, the green in them glinting by the firelight. “You came to me once. And I wish I could have deserved you, but I didn't. I could have loved you—indeed, I had dreams of it—but I could never be worthy of you. He is worthy of you. Go to him.”

“But he . . . I can't force . . .”

“Let him decide. Mrs. Oldhall, you should never decide for a man what his heart contains.”

“How absurd,” she said, “that you call me Mrs. Oldhall in these circumstances.”

He smiled at her and said, “You are right, Emily. But you are wrong if you don't follow your heart now.”

“How do you know so much about the human heart?” Emily asked lightly. Only when he flinched did she realize how he would take it.

But his answer was soft, pensive. “Because I know another kind of heart. And I know the difference.”